ExploraTour: A Peek into the Lives of the Stars

The Hubble Space Telescope's View of Star Birth.

This is a dust cloud in the Eagle Nebula
(M16) photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. This dark
smoky-looking structure is a column of cool interstellar gas and dust
where new stars are being formed.

This cloud was originally much bigger. What we are viewing is the
densest part of the cloud that has survived being evaporated by the
ultraviolet radiation striking it from nearby young hot stars. Even now
you can see streamers of gas boiling away from the main cloud.

Buried deep in the main cloud are denser pockets or globules of gas that
are uncovered as the main cloud is evaporated. These globules are called
"Evaporating Gaseous Globules" or EGGs for short.

Inside some of these
EGGs are protostars (objects that are on their way to becoming stars).
If the dust cloud evaporates away from around the EGG before the
protostar has evolved into a star, then the protostar may stop growing
because it can no longer draw on the cloud for material. In this case,
a star will never form and the protostar will become a brown dwarf.

If
the protostar survives to become a star, ultraviolet radiation from the
new star will help to evaporate the EGG from within.

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